Channel Overview

Each Vienna Ensemble instance offers up to 48 MIDI ports with 16 MIDI channels each (= 768 MIDI channels) and a virtually unlimited number of audio ports. You can set the number of ports in the Server Preferences. The channel selector also allows you to choose All to receive on all 16 channels or none to temporarily disable MIDI input on that port.You can set the default MIDI Channel in the Vienna Ensemble Preferences (Default = 1).

If you’re running Vienna Ensemble as a plug-in, a dedicated Plug-in MIDI In port will be offered for every Instrument. Used as a VST 3/AAX plugin, up to 48ports are available within Cubase, Nuendo,Pro Tools and Sonar.

Assign 2 key ranges for each virtual instrument, which allows you to create, e.g, full string sections with your desired articulations (even Performance Legatos) – simply assign the same MIDI Channel to all of them and "stack" their keyboard ranges. E.g., you could let the double basses play from B0 to B1, cellos from C2 to B2, violas from C3 to B3, and the violins from C4 to their highest note – just try out what you can do and what makes sense … You can also let the ranges overlap.

MIDI Port and MIDI channel of each instrument channel are displayed both on top of each channel in the mixer and on the Channel Pane.You can also change the settings here.

The new unified channel mode now also shows each plug-in on top of each channel, and you can exchange the plug-ins as you like.

Possible Plug-ins: Vienna Instruments, Vienna Instruments PRO, Vienna Imperial.

You can now also drag or copy inputs from one channel to another.

And you can bypass the plug-in with the power button that appears when you click on the slot.

You can assign FX plug-ins to every channel, and you have flexible routing possibilities with assignable Sends. Simply click in the FX and Send Rows in the mixer.

The default stereo power-pan has been transformed into a "post insert" plug-in rack.

All plug-ins in this post insert rack are processed after the pre-fader sends.

Right-click the slot to replace the inserted plug-in (see above). Double-click the slot to open the Plug-in GUI for more exact placement. You can also drag additional plug-ins into this effect rack. And you can bypass the plug-in with the power button that appears when you click on the slot.

The Matrix Mixer features a gain, delay and phase network which allows you to solve a variety of problems, for example:

• Feeding Left/Right channel into LFE channel
• Phase adjustment of a single channel in a surround setup
• Delay individual channels in a surround setup
• Solving phase problems of individual channels

The Matrix Mixer offers two different modes of adjustment, Gain and Delay . In the Gain Mode , the matrix displays gain settings for each source - destination channel feed.

The left column represents inputs, and the top row represents outputs.

Gain adjustment: Adjust gain for each feed by click-dragging on the node. Double-click on a node to enter a value from the keyboard. Phase reverse: By right-clicking on a node, this node will be phase reversed. A node with active phase-reversal is marked with an orange ring. You may for instance send a phase-reversed feed of the left channel to the right surround channel, and a phase-reversed feed from the right channel to the left surround channel, to create certain effects, or "pseudo-surround".

In Delay Mode , each node displays a delay for the individual feed. The delay mode allows you to set an individual delay for each matrix node, enabling very complex mixing.

Delay adjustment: Adjust delay time for each feed by click-dragging on the node. Double-click on a node to enter a value from the keyboard.

Delay mode: Choose to display delay values by Time(ms), Distance(m) or Samples.

Having applied delay settings to a node and switching back to the Gain mode, will yield a green triangle on the affected node, signifying an active delay value.

Vienna Ensemble offers two different pan modes: Normal balance, where the volume of the "weaker" channel is lowered correspondingly, and power panning, where you don’t lose any stereo information but can narrow or even collapse a channel’s stereo signal as desired by dragging the left and right handles.

Clicking in the space between the handles or dragging the center dot in the graphic view allows you to move the channel’s stereo center.

A right-click takes you to the context menu of this "Post FX Rack". This way you can choose to insert quite some features of MIR PRO (if you have a license available) or alternative FX. More about these options can be found in the MIR PRO User Manual.

The output assignment offers flexible routing possibilities including all busses – you can assign each channel either to a bus or output, so that you can set up your mixing console to fit your needs; e.g., you could assign all string instruments to Bus #1, all drums to Bus #2, etc.

Of course, changes made in a Bus channel will affect all channels attached to it.

To edit multiple tracks at once, there's a convenient workflow option available:

Activate the option to Automatically edit selected channels as a selection group in the Vienna Ensemble SERVICE Preferences (see above): When activated, selected channels and MIR PRO plug-ins will behave like groups, without the need to hold "Alt".

Use "Alt" to edit a single track while all other tracks stay selected. Normal behavior can be achieved by holding Alt, so it effectively reverses the functionality of the Alt modifier for grouping.